Alnmouth WI, January meeting

Published:07:00Saturday 25 January 2014

We had a good turn out of members and visitors for Alnmouth WI’s first meeting of 2014, especially as it was such an awful night outside.

However, we were greeted with the news that the speaker we were so looking forward to, Louise Lewis of Silk and Sand, had come down with a virus. Unfortunately these things happen, especially at this time of year.

Once everyone was settled, Haley, our president, warmly welcomed everyone and started the evening’s business, asking Yvonne, our secretary, to read the minutes, which covered both November and the December party night.

On the agenda was the paying of our membership subs, so much groaning and moaning about that, but most of us tipped up and gave Jean Cullen, our treasurer, the necessary amount.

Haley thanked everyone for their input into our Christmas party which was all in-house, including our sumptuous buffet and excellent entertainment, and moved on to matters arising.

The NFWI annual meeting is being held this year in Leeds and the resolution chosen to vote on at that event is a choice of one of the following: Increasing organ donations; campaign against female genital mutilation and the provision of non-acute hospital beds, so that will take some serious consideration.

Among many outings and up-and-coming events there was a very interesting suggestion put forward regarding our centenary, which is would we support the idea of our Federation giving a bursary to a young woman preparing to go to college or university in 2015, each WI to donate £10 a year for two years to raise £2,000. This was unanimously agreed upon.

Also to celebrate the WI centenary, each WI is invited to take part in the baton handover event which takes place at Bamburgh, representing Northumberland.

As Celia was more than ready to start, we were first handed quiz sheets which were a lot of fun to answer and as most seem to enjoy a quiz it went down well. Secondly she had organised her husband, with the help of John Hall the technical person, to set up the equipment to show our 90th anniversary DVD.

As most of us haven’t seen it for quite a while and indeed some of our members haven’t seen it all, we thoroughly enjoyed it.

Well done Celia for organising it at such short notice, not to mention Terry and John our technical experts.

We had two birthday girls to give flowers to at this meeting, December and January, and they were Ann Maclean and Dianne Lilly respectively, who looked very pleased to receive them.

Our February meeting competition is Something for Valentine’s Night and our speakers for the evening are Jane Jackson and Margaret Kenny who will give us a demonstration of the art of rag rugging which should be interesting.